[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 9]
[House]
[Page 12149]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


[[Page 12149]]

    REPUBLICANS SHOULD ABANDON PRIVATE HEALTH AND PRESCRIPTION DRUG 
                            INSURANCE SCHEME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have an idea. What if we, say, 
break Medicare apart and ask seniors to shop in the private insurance 
market if they want to piece it back together. Seniors could buy one 
private plan to cover doctors visits, another to cover hospital stays, 
a third to cover home health services, and maybe a fourth to cover 
prescription drugs. Perhaps they could purchase an Aetna plan for 
outpatient care, a Kaiser plan for the physical therapy coverage, and 
maybe Golden Rule will offer insurance for medical equipment.
  Does this sound absurd? Why is it less absurd to isolate prescription 
drugs and require Medicare beneficiaries to carry a separate private 
stand-alone you-are-on-your-own policy for that benefit?
  That is what the Republican prescription drug plan is all about. It 
privatizes the prescription drug plan. It says to senior citizens, 
``Here is a voucher. Here is a little bit of money,'' although they 
give the money to the insurance company, actually not directly to the 
senior citizen. ``Here is a plan, here is some money. Go out and find 
your own plan.''
  If the GOP prescription drug plan is a back door attempt to privatize 
Medicare, something that Republicans have wanted to do since 90 percent 
of them voted against the creation of Medicare 35 years ago, and 
occasionally say, in more recent years, that they want to privatize 
Medicare, my colleagues should come out and tell us that they want to 
privatize Medicare.
  If their goal truly is to help America's elderly, my Republican 
colleagues need to go back to the drawing board. Better yet, follow our 
lead. The best way to complete the Medicare benefits package is to 
complete the Medicare benefits package. That means adding a new drug 
benefit to the existing Medicare program.
  Medicare has worked for senior citizens in this country, half of whom 
had no health insurance 35 years ago. Medicare has worked for senior 
citizens in this country, making it probably the most popular 
government program in the history of this Nation. Why should we 
privatize it? Why should we take prescription drugs and make it into a 
private insurance stand-alone you-are-on-your-own kind of program?
  It means we should add the new drug benefit to the existing Medicare 
benefits package. That is what works. We know that works. That is what 
this Congress should pass. Unless my colleagues can explain why the 
existing Medicare program somehow is not worthy of a prescription drug 
benefit, they should abandon their private insurance scheme and join 
us.
  Last Friday, a week ago today, I chartered a bus and took about 20 
senior citizens from Lorain County and Medina County, Ohio, on a 2\1/2\ 
bus trip to Windsor, Ontario, Canada. They took their prescriptions 
with them for medicine. Most of them were Medicare beneficiaries, some 
were younger than that.
  They took their prescriptions with them. We got a doctor in Canada to 
write a similar prescription. We went to a drugstore in Windsor, 
Ontario, and every senior citizen on that trip, every single senior 
citizen on that trip, saved at least $100 on prescriptions. On the 
average, the 15 or 20 senior citizens saved $200, and some of them 
saved as much as $300 to $400 on one prescription, on the one 
prescription that they had brought with them.
  The fact is, Canadians buy the same drugs, their drug stores sell the 
same dosage of the same prescription drugs made by the same company, 
usually an American company, for half the price that American 
drugstores charge. It is not the drugstores, it is the fact that 
prescription drug companies, the big name brand drug companies in the 
United States of America, sell their drugs in Canada at half the price 
as they do in the United States.
  We are the only country in the world, underscore that, we are the 
only country in the world, that allows the drug companies to 
unilaterally, monopolistically, discriminatingly sell their drugs to 
the United States with no interference.
  In every other country in the world the prices are lower. In every 
other country in the world, from Germany to France to Israel to Nigeria 
to Brazil to Japan to England, none of those countries allows the drug 
companies to set their price in a monopolistic and discriminatory way. 
America's elderly pay twice as much for drugs as America's HMOs, big 
insurance companies, and the VA sell them for.
  Americans buying drugs pay twice as much on the average as people in 
every other country in the world. Americans, in fact, pay more for 
their drugs out of pocket at a drugstore for the same drug than if they 
go into a pet store and buy the exact same drug and the exact same 
dosage for their pets.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask that this Congress put aside the risky insurance 
scheme and pass a Medicare drug benefit.

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